We bought this rummage lot cheap; and if you don't like your bargain you may leave it."

The country has too great a stake in this question of Competitive Examinations to let Patronage off with such easy excuses. It is resolved to have the right man in the right place cost what it may.

It is wonderful to remark, how jealous patronage is of the public purse, when any case of abuse is opened out. Our soldiers have been poisoned, and the barracks of our crack regiments have been worse than the Chinese "stink pots." We are told by the Horse Guards that it is entirely a matter of money, and that if we wish for pure air, we must pay for it. So we are told in the Government offices, if we want wranglers and prizemen, the country must pay for it. Greek and the calculus are like kid gloves and glazed boots, purely a matter of money; and that if it is the country's whim to hire public servants deep in roots and fractions, it must pay for its whim, as a gentleman does who engages his gentleman's gentleman to wear a white tie and hand round champagne on state occasions.

The author of Latter-day Pamphlets has a very different view of cheap clerks from my Lord Grey. "Who are available," he asks, to your offices in Downing-street? All the gifted souls who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed by the true eternal divine right, which will never become obsolete, to be your governors and administrators; and precisely as you employ them or neglect to employ them, will your State be favoured of Heaven or disfavoured. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of two conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you must have him: as your ally and coadjutor, or, failing

that, as your natural enemy; which shall it be? I consider that every government convicts itself of infatuation and futility, or absolves and justifies itself before God and manaccording as it answers this question. With all sublunary entities, this is the question of questions. What talent is born in you? How do you employ that? The crop of spiritual talent that is born to you of human nobleness and intellect and heroic faculty, this is infinitely more important than your crops of cotton or corn, or wine, or herrings, or whale oil, which the newspapers record with such anxiety every season."

The country will certainly have to chose between such counsels as the foregoing and the Earl Grey's plan of cheap clerks. We would commend to the noble Lord to go into the market for the old bank pens, which after sundry boilings and nibbings, are made up in boxes to do lady's work. In the same way discarded city clerks, used-up bank officials, castaways from bubble insurance companies, could be got cheap for the public service. Young blood from the Universities, with prizes behind and fellowships before them, may be wanted for the public service; but drudges who can copy, cypher, and ask no questions, can be got cheap. So, on the plausible ground of economy, patronage will resume her sway at the public offices, and the reign of the Dunciad begin again for ever and a day in Downingstreet.

The more questions are asked on this subject by independent members the better satisfied the country will be.

Competitive Examination, if left with any ministry, Whig or Tory, will be left with a careless nurse, who will put it to bed, overlie it, and awake surprised to find its young charge smothered under the pillows of Patronage.

To the mind of every thoughtful member of the Church of England and Ireland, there is something fascinating in the word Parish. In recent discussions upon ecclesiastical affairs, it was felt to be one of those complex terms which, even when incompletely analyzed, captivate the judgment by the exuberance and mysterious beauty of their associations. The Church, the village school, baptisms, confirmations, sacraments, marriages, death-beds, ministries of grace and love melting into the solemnest music of life-these are the thoughts that hang inseparably about the word parish, like fragrance around the rose, or melody above the falling waters. Not without sweetness is even Blackstone's sentence of definition: "A parish is that circuit of ground which is committed to the

charge of one parson, or vicar, or other minister having cure of souls therein." There is something pleasant even in the jabbering and clanging of antiquaries over the date of parochial divisions - whether, with Camden, to be set about the year 630, or, with Sir Henry Hobart, at the Council of Lateran (A.D. 1179), or, with Selden, in a mean between these extremes. The sources of those things we love best we do not wish to see with the accuracy of land-surveyors. They look all the nearer heaven with the mists of time curled about them.

But how much more beautiful does this abstraction become when it is projected into flesh and blood, as by George Herbert, Chaucer, and Dryden. Recall Herbert's "Country Parson" for a few moments. In his

1855.

An Address: delivered before the

office, the parson is the deputy of Christ for the reducing of men to the obedience of God. In his closet and study, by prayer, by a holy life, by collation of text with text, by commentators and fathers, he ploughs the field of the Scriptures. The tillage and the pasture-field afford him emblems and illustrations wherewith to illuminate and emblazon his texts for the eyes of his rustic congregation. The dry stem of the catechism shoot out into symmetrical and well-laden branches under his fruitful meditation. The learned simplicity of his questions melts the Gospel into the mind of reverential childhood. Cases of conscience are, by his treatment, made to come home to men's businesses and bosoms. In the desk, with lifted heart and hand, and eye-with words "treatable and slow, yet not so slow neither as to let the fervency of the supplicant hang and die between speaking, but with a grave liveliness between fear and zeal, pausing, yet pressing, he performs his duty." In the pulpit, by earnestness of speech, by freedom of the eyes, by particular application, by use of stories and sayings (the Baconian deductio intellectualis ad sensibile), by an inward holiness manifested in devotional texts-in words heart-deep and heart-dipped, in fervent ejaculations, in wishes for the people's welfare, in appeals to the presence of God-by handling his subject simply and solidly-he rivets and retains his audience. In his house, he is a model of every household virtue and every domestic charity. In his afternoon "circuits," he has a word to say for his unseen master to the peasant and the tradesman. No wayfarer passes on the road without his blessing. Every inn, where he casually rests on a journey, is enriched by his prayers. The parochial pharmacopoeia is not locked up in the dispensary. Purgatives are not hideous in bottles, or sickly in powders, but blow in white, or blush in damask roses, along the parson's grounds. Salves and poultices are not made of outlandish gums, but are brought in from his lady's garden -a wealth of odorous, yet home-bred names-valerian, yarrow, St. John's wort, alder, chamomile, mallows, comfrey, and smallage. When he assays to cure, his prayers "raise the

action from the shop to the Church." So walks the parson in the midst of his parish, bringing a heavenly influence into common things-not a monk, yet not a worldling-not austere, yet gently sad, for his heart is nailed to his master's cross; and when he looks from it round his little world, he sees two sad sights, sin and misery, God dishonoured and men afflicted. By Herbert's picture in prose there is only one similar delineation in verse worthy to be placed. It is the draught of the character of a good parson dashed off by the rough but powerful pencil of Geoffrey Chaucer, and re-touched by the master hand of Dryden:

"A parish priest was of the pilgrim train,
An awful, reverend, and religious man;
Nothing reserv'd or sullen was to see,
But sweet regards, and pleasing sanctity.
Mild was his accent, and his action free;
With eloquence innate his tongue was arm'd;
Tho' harsh the precept yet the people charm'd.
He preach'd the joys of heav'n, and pains of
hell,

And warn'd the sinner with becoming zeal;
But on eternal mercy loved to dwell.
He taught the gospel rather than the law,
And forc'd himself to drive, but lov'd to
draw.

Wide was his parish, not contracted close In streets, but here and there a straggling house;

Yet still he was at hand, without request,
To save the sick, to succour the distrest.
All this the good old man perform'd alone,
Nor shared his pains, for curate he had none.”

There are those who think that all this savours of "church and state, and that old-fashioned sort of thing;" that it deserves to be ranked with the amiable feebleness of the patriarchal theory in political science. There are those who would supersede it by a gigantic system of chapels and preaching-rooms; by a great company of interesting-looking very young gentlemen shaking their perfumed locks in vehement declamation. They prefer the stimulant of revival-preaching to the plain, wholesome food of the parochial system. We are far from denying the use of the former in its own measure; but our reason and our hope are with the latter.

Waiving, however, all argumentative discussion of this question; assuming our present parochial arrangements, and starting from the point of view presented by the very title of Bishop Fitzgerald's Charge,